


That Razor's Edge

by Fionn_Sgeul



Series: Liminal Spirits [1]
Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: (It's DP what do you expect), Actually ALL THE CRISES, And a morality crisis, Character Kinda-Sorta Not-Death, Danny is a sad puppy dog and needs hugs, Gen, How many bombs can we drop on Valerie before she snaps, Identity Reveal, Is it possible to have a vitality crisis? If so she's having one, Let's just pull all the rugs out from under Valerie, Set before D-Stabilized, Timeline What Timeline, Valerie has an identity crisis, liminality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-18
Updated: 2020-03-31
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:14:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23192221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fionn_Sgeul/pseuds/Fionn_Sgeul
Summary: Valerie's world was clear-cut and straightforward. Then came the night when everything she thought she knew came crashing down on her head … along with a few tons of pulverised building.That was the night that she became the thing she feared … and discovered that maybe it wasn't a thing to be so frightened of.And also, maybe it was finally, finally time to admit that Phantom wasn't such a bad guy after all.
Relationships: Danny Fenton & Valerie Gray
Series: Liminal Spirits [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1797910
Comments: 115
Kudos: 377





	1. The End ... or the Beginning?

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Grounded](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18610822) by [DarkNymfa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkNymfa/pseuds/DarkNymfa). 



> So completely by accident, I have written more DP fanfic. Yeah. I was trying to make progress on my original novel for NaNoWriMo, and somehow this popped out -- or the first half to two thirds of it, anyway, and then I came back later and finished it.
> 
> Credit for the concept and basic shape of the story to DarkNymfa's "Grounded." I came across it a while back and thought, "Wouldn't be interesting to take a closer look at what's going on in Valerie's head during this whole thing," because I honestly thought she should be freaking out way more, and it's utterly fascinating to look at what happens to someone when they get their whole world turned upside down.
> 
> It was just supposed to be a few pages. Just a little look at the moment her whole world changes. And then it ... got away from me, kinda. Completely. IT BALLOONED INTO 26 PAGES, OKAY.
> 
> I've played fast and loose with the DP timeline here, setting it before D-Stabilized, so Valerie hasn't met Danielle yet and knows nothing about half-ghosts, but also aging them up so she and Danny are about sixteen or seventeen.
> 
> Minor to moderate swearing

Cold. That was the first thing Valerie noticed. She was so, so cold.

She tried to move, but her body felt wrong — distant, numb, floaty … like there were shivers running under her skin. Something … something was wrong.

She was lying on something hard, uneven — a sharp corner dug into her belly. Why was she lying here? Her mind fought to make sense of it, to place the sensations. Why … why wasn't … why wasn't she in bed?

 _Ghosts_ , a back part of her mind answered. _A fight_. _Danger._

The thought sent a jolt of adrenaline through her, like ice and soda pop through her veins. Her fight or flight instincts came back online, and she redirected all her attention outward, jerking her head up off the ground and opening her eyes.

Darkness pressed against her retinas, and silence in on her ears. Disorientation swirled in her mind, and for a moment she felt untethered in an utter void, unable even to tell up from down.

Then her hands flexed and pressed down against reassuringly solid ground. She knew what down was. She was lying on it.

She ran her hands over the ground, but couldn't feel much through her armoured gloves. Her right hand knocked into something that moved and rattled, and she grabbed it. It felt like a piece of loose stone. She dropped it, and the noise it made was oddly reassuring.

Okay, ears working fine. Good. Now if only she could _see_ something…

Her left arm came up against a barrier. She groped at it. Rough, uneven — a few little bits and pieces rained down from her touch, but larger pieces remained unmoved. More rocks? Or … rubble? She wished she could feel it with her skin, but didn't dare remove her protective suit.

She tried to remember whom she'd been fighting, but her mind was sluggish, her memories slipping through her fingers like water. Whatever had happened, it looked like a fight had gone bad.

She planted her hands on the ground and tried to push herself up. She came up short with a gasp.

She was so numb she hadn't noticed, but her left leg was stuck. Her right came forward when she pulled on it, gravel grating against her, but her left wouldn't budge a fraction of an inch.

Dimly, distantly, she wondered why she wasn't in pain — she could feel pressure, now that she was paying attention, from her thigh down to her calf, but no pain.

She tried not to think about how it was probably a very bad sign.

She tried one more fruitless tug, then slumped back down onto her chest, trying to fight down the panic as it curled through her middle. She couldn't move — she _couldn't move_. She was stuck, with god knew how many pounds of rubble on top of her, pressing down on her leg, and she could barely even _feel_ it…

Maybe it didn't hurt because she wasn't injured. Maybe her suit had been enough to protect her, keep her from being crushed. _Yes_ , her suit — she could bring up the GPS, see where she was, call for help… (It grated, but she was prepared to admit at this stage that she definitely needed help.)

"GPS," she said in a voice that came out more as a hoarse rasp than the command she meant it to be. Nothing happened. The world around her remained utterly black.

It occurred to her suddenly that her visor ought to have been already lit up with readings and information. It should have been the first thing she saw.

She groped at her head to make sure her helmet was on, even though she could _feel_ it around her head. "GPS," she said again, tight with panic. Nothing.

For a horrifying, terrifying minute, she wondered if she was blind. If the GPS coordinates were that moment displayed before her eyes, only she couldn't _see_ them. No, no, no, no, no, her life was _over_ if she was blind…

Then her addled, panicky mind realised that her suit's systems were probably knocked out. It had never happened before; so far, her new suit had seemed nearly indestructible. But a vague memory was starting to filter back in — a memory of being hit with something _big_ , something that blotted out her whole world with the blinding light of supercharged ectoplasm.

Maybe that light could have blinded her. But more likely — she really, really hoped — it had just fried her suit.

Desperate to _see_ , she hit the button to retract her helmet and remove the visor in front of her eyes. Nothing happened. She hit it a few more times, just to be sure that pushing it harder or longer wouldn't help. Nothing.

An unexpected, fresh wave of panic hit her. She wasn't just trapped in this rubble; she was trapped in her _suit_ , and some part of her was now irrationally convinced that her helmet was going to suffocate her.

She dropped her head into her hands, pressing against the helmet with her fingers. _It's fine_ , she told herself as sternly as she could manage. _It doesn't need power for you to breathe. It's fine. And the fact that the helmet doesn't work means that the suit is definitely fried, which means there's no reason to think you're blind. It's just dark. Just really, really dark._

And it also meant that she was stuck down here without any way to call for help. She didn't take her phone with her on ghost hunts, if she could help it. It was probably sitting on her bedside table, plugged into its charger to prepare for school the next day.

School. She had school tomorrow. And unless some miracle popped in to get her out of this, _soon_ , she wasn't going to be there. How long before her father noticed she was missing? Would he check on her in the morning, or just rush off to work thinking he had missed her? How long before he started searching? How long before someone thought to dig up this rubble? _How long?_

That line of thought was quickly leading Valerie into a spiral of deep, icy panic. She wrenched herself away from it. Focus on something practical — that was how you dealt with panic.

Practical. Be practical.

Right.

What could she do to free her leg? Maybe if she could push up on what was pinning it _just enough_ , she could work it free. A dark, logical part of her mind whispered that her being able to shift that much weight was _extremely_ unlikely, but that didn't matter. She had to try.

She braced the knee of her right leg against the ground and tried to push up with her thigh. But her right leg only had a few inches to manoeuvre, not enough to apply real strength. She tried anyway. Because she was going to lose her mind if she didn't.

She strained and pushed, grunting and gasping. "Come _on_ ," she hissed, _willing_ it to move. "Let me _go_ —"

Something sparked inside her. A sharp point of cold, right at the very centre of her. It buzzed, shivered, and then exploded.

A wave of cold washed over her, from her core out to her extremities, washing away all warmth in its path. But she felt no chill in its wake — no warmth, no cold, just … nothing.

Spooked, panicking, she wrenched herself forwards, and shrieked in shock as she came free instantly. The rubble creaked and shifted behind her as she jerked away from it. She expected to faceplant into broken concrete, but instead she just came up against gentle resistance that stopped her motion.

Her body … it felt _weird_. Like it was floating, like it wasn't quite there. She tried to clap a hand to her chest. The impact felt vague and distant, like a dream, like a memory.

Her mind was swirling, whirling; she couldn't think straight — what was wrong something was wrong why couldn't she feel things nothing made _sense_.

She tried to plant her hands, ground herself. She felt the same distant, not-quite-there sensation of them hitting the concrete. And then they _kept going_ , into something — like she was dipping them into molasses—

She wrenched them back, terror twisting her mind into a pretzel. She opened her mouth and tried to gasp, instinct driving her to hyperventilate. But nothing happened. She told her lungs to expand, but no air came rushing in.

She clutched at her chest and throat — but no, no, she wouldn't be able to feel anything through the suit. So she went completely still, shut her eyes — pointlessly, in the utter darkness — and _focused_. Listened for her own heartbeat.

Utter, total stillness.

 _"No!"_ she screamed, jerking forward, arms flailing, her voice sounding distant and echoey to her own ears. No, no, no, oh god, this couldn't be happening, it couldn't, this was a dream…

A traitorous part of her mind ran along logical lines. When she'd wrenched herself free, come suddenly loose, had she wrenched herself _right out of her own—?_

She began groping frantically through the darkness, feeling for a body. Because this couldn't be happening, this couldn't be true, there must be a way to _fix this…_

Her groping hands kept knocking straight _through_ things, and this was no good she couldn't tell was she was touching or not touching oh _god_ —

A sob clawed its way up her throat — but she couldn't really sob, because she couldn't breathe; her throat just spasmed in odd ways.

"God _damn_ it," she choked, voice still faint, distant, wrong. "I need _light_."

 _Red_.

The light exploded across her retinas, dazzling her. She shrieked and raised her hands as a shield.

The light followed her hands, zooming _way_ too close to her face. She squinted, trying to see, and — holy shit, her _hands were on fire—_

In a moment of total, ludicrous panic, she tried to put them out by waving them frantically through the air. The light — strangely too _red_ for fire — did not go out. And after half a minute of total freak-out and finally trying to hide from her _own hands_ , it finally dawned on her that she wasn't in pain.

Slowly, carefully, she raised her head from where she'd tucked it into her arms and chest. Her hands were still on fire. But it wasn't fire; it was too red, and it didn't move right. It was halfway between smoke and fire.

Ectoplasm.

The horrible certainty sunk into her very bones. One of Mr. Lancer's old quotes echoed through her head: _He who fights with monsters must take care, lest he thereby become a monster himself… For when you gaze into the abyss … the abyss gazes also into you._

Valerie could feel the abyss, right now. It yawned all around her.

She looked down at herself. The black of her suit had turned gleaming white … the red details now ectoplasmic green.

And worst of all, she could see the ground right through her legs.

Slowly, reluctantly, she raised her head, spreading her glowing hands, and looked for her body.

A great slab of concrete leaned over her, mere inches above her head. A wall, she judged, which had toppled, but been stopped from reaching the ground by other rubble, creating the tiny triangle of space Valerie had been trapped in. She could see the junction where she had been trapped, the wall leaning down on her left leg…

…But there was no body.

What the hell did _that_ mean? 

***

She was still sitting there, staring blankly at the spot where she _should_ have been, when something pierced her fugue.

_"Valerie!"_

A faint, distant voice — she could just barely hear it. _"Valerie!"_ it called again. It was too far away to recognise; all she could tell was that it was on the higher end of male and absolutely frantic.

The thought of help coming, of someone looking for her, should have lit her up with hope. But it didn't. She was numb, empty, and horribly certain that she was beyond the reach of help.

The voice shouted again, closer. _"Val? Where are you? Answer me!"_

Recognition fired off in her brain. Phantom's voice, though higher and more strained than she'd ever heard it before. He sounded … scared.

More memories trickled into her head. Phantom. He'd been fighting the ghost with her — one of their temporary truces. And they'd needed it; the enemy had been way out of the league of their usual opponents. A massive, bearded man, shrouded by clouds and throwing ectoplasmic lightning bolts around like Zeus in the mother of all hissy fits.

The amount of power flying around had been terrifying. She remembered thinking that this was a fight where one wrong step could be fatal.

Soon after, Phantom had taken a hit that had knocked him right out of sight into the warehouses below. And then, before she could react, Valerie had taken a massive lightning bolt right to the chest…

She couldn't remember anything after that.

And now Phantom had come back to look for her. He'd either taken down the ghost, or it had escaped, and then he'd come back to look for her.

She really didn't know what that made her feel.

_"Valerie! Please!"_

His voice was ragged, desperate, wrecked.

Was there any faking that level of emotion, she suddenly wondered to herself? She meant, well … actors did it in movies all the time, but… At first, she'd assumed that Phantom's show of caring about her, looking out for her, had only been an attempt to get her guard down. Then later, after he'd had several opportunities where her guard had been very much down, and hadn't taken them, she thought he was just trying to get on her good side, so she'd be less of a pain in his ghostly ass.

But if that was all he cared about … why put so much effort into his acting? Why try _so_ hard, when no one was around to see?

She didn't understand.

His voice echoed out again, calling her. She looked down at her transparent body and realised, suddenly, that there was nothing keeping her in here. Solid objects weren't a barrier to her anymore.

Slowly, tentatively, she reached her glowing hands up to the concrete above her head. She felt the concrete against her fingertips, felt its resistance to her movement, but when she _pushed_ … her hands slid right into it, like she was pushing them into some thick, viscous liquid.

It felt _weird_. Phantom had made her intangible before, but she'd never had time to really _notice_ , not like this. She could feel the concrete _inside_ her hands. It made her shudder. But it worked.

…What should she do? Should she just … jump upwards and hope her momentum carried her all the way up through who know how much rubble? She couldn't climb; there was nothing to grab on to. Should she try to _swim_?

How the hell did ghostly flight work, anyway? If only she had her hoverboard…

Somewhere in the back of her head, a little voice started talking to her — a little voice that somehow remained calm, even while the rest of her was losing her mind. Ghosts, it said, were made of ectoplasm, not flesh — ectoplasm formed and moulded by the ghost's own self-image. It looked the way the ghost expected it to look and behaved the way the ghost expected it to behave.

So, if she was ectoplasm now … why shouldn't her suit work?

She looked down at her transparent feet and clicked the heels together.

Struts shot out, and the hoverboard formed … and shoved her high enough up that her head started to go through the concrete ceiling. She felt it _in her brain_ and ducked down with a yelp.

She crouched there, on her board, trying to get her bearings. The board was transparent too, and it felt … different. The hum of its engine was faint, almost imaginary, not quite real. The little voice in her head said that made sense, because it was just an ectoplasmic construct based on her own memories, not real machinery. It was powered entirely by _her_.

But if it was straight out of her memories and expectations, then it should work exactly the same. She tilted it up towards the ceiling and tried to take a deep, steadying breath. Which of course didn't work and just caused another little bubble of panic to burst in her chest as her imaginary lungs failed to draw in air.

It was a desperate attempt to escape her panic that finally drove her to zoom up through the rubble.

Passing through it was a terrifying experience. It was like trying to swim to the surface of inky black water, without even knowing which way was up. Except the water was _in_ her as well as _around_ her, and she was terrified she'd somehow get stuck, terrified she'd never find her way out, terrified of what she had _become_ , fear driving her faster and faster…

And then she burst up into moonlight, like a drowning swimmer breaching the surface, surrounded by glorious clear _air_.

She hung in the air, staring up at the crystalline sky, a tapestry of twinkling stars. Funny … she'd never really noticed … how beautiful it was. The world was beautiful.

She wasn't ready to die.

"…Valerie?" said an uncertain, trembling voice.

She turned. Phantom floated a few yards behind her, transparent as she was, the lower half of his body drifting into a vague, spectral trail. His face looked stricken, contorted in pain and horror.

And, the calm little voice observed, he looked exhausted — his form was fainter than it usually was, and the luminescence of his eyes was so faint that she couldn't really see it, just a faint hint of green in the shadows of his eyes.

Valerie again tried the button to retract her helmet. This time it worked, letting her meet Phantom's wide, horrified stare. She had no idea what she was going to say until it suddenly tumbled out.

"I think I'm dead."


	2. Stranded in the Same Lonely Boat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes, when there's nobody left for you but your enemies, it's time to become friends.
> 
> Valerie's situation makes her confront some hard truths about herself, and she finds herself looking at Phantom through completely different eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here's Chapter 2! Hope all of you are doing okay in these crazy pandemic times. I'm laid off from one of my two jobs, but my other one is teaching online classes, which is pretty unassailable, so I'm all right.
> 
> One of the things that struck me while writing this chapter is that, for someone who hates ghosts, Valerie behaves a _hell_ of a lot like one. She's obsessive, violent, vengeance-driven, stuck in her ways, and disinclined to listen to reason. THE IRONY.
> 
> But being a ghost herself is forcing her to take a real, hard look at herself, realising that this isn't going the way she would've thought it would go, that ghosts clearly aren't quite what she thought they were. Which means that maybe _she_ isn't what she thought _she_ was...

Valerie was floating in a strange, numb fugue. Her world was changing faster than she was able to process. It was too huge, too much to take in, too much … too much … too much.

But her mind had latched onto one certainty: Phantom wasn't acting. No fake, emotionless poser could have reacted the way he did to her little declaration.

His face had crumpled, he'd whispered, "No…" reaching out a hand towards her. The emotion had brought a little glow back into his eyes, until she could just make out the two tiny green circles of his irises. And then his eyes had filled with tears, and the light had refracted through them to make them glow and shimmer.

A dizzy, abstracted part of her mind thought that the effect was strangely beautiful.

Now he was right in front of her, tears streaming down his face, reaching for her but hanging back, afraid to touch her.

"I'm sorry," he choked. "I'm sorry, I wasn't quick enough — if I'd just been _faster_ —"

" _I'm_ the idiot who wasn't fast enough," she snapped at him, unaccountably irritated with him blaming himself. "If I'd just _goddamn dodged_ …" She had frozen, just for a second, when Phantom had been wiped out, and she hadn't unfrozen fast enough.

Phantom didn't reply, and they fell into a long, haunted silence, both staring at nothing, trying to process.

Valerie was the one to eventually break it, when a new fear occurred to her. "I — I thought … I thought ghosts couldn't remember their lives, who they were," she said, voice quavering. Was she going to forget? Was it just a matter of time before she lost herself?

Phantom stirred and looked at her, his form becoming sharper, the vague blur below his waist defining itself into legs again. Voice hoarse, he said, "Some do, some don't. I think the ones who forget do it because they really don't want to remember."

A little curiosity woke in Valerie's mind. "Do you? Remember?" she asked.

He ducked his head, looking away, slouching defensively. "Yeah," he murmured, but pointedly did not continue.

Valerie didn't push; she had bigger concerns. "So I'm not gonna just … forget?"

"No," he said firmly, definitely. "Not unless you want to."

There was absolutely no question of that. Never, never ever.

"…What … what was it like? Just after, I mean," she asked, hating the tremulousness in her voice but unable to help it. "Just after you … died. Did you … change … in your mind…?" In other words, was she doomed to sink into the violence and malevolence of the ghosts who endlessly attacked her town?

Phantom frowned, pulling his legs up to sit cross-legged in the air. He seemed to be genuinely thinking it through. "I mean … yes, but … in small ways? I was kinda too shocked and terrified to notice for the first … week or two, I guess, and I think it took a while for it to develop. But…"

He grimaced, rubbing his hands against his ankles. "I … definitely formed an Obsession. A couple, actually, though one of them you could argue I had before. And…" He winced. "I think I got more territorial, too. I mean, there's the whole another-ghost-in-my-haunt thing, but I also got more pissy about things like, y'know, someone going in my room when I wasn't there." His voice dropped to a mutter, no longer directed at her. "Though on the other hand, I had other reasons to get upset about that…"

Valerie wasn't sure what that was about, so she targeted the more obvious bit. "That's why you attack the other ghosts? They're trespassing on your haunt?" Was that what _she_ would start doing, now? Would Phantom start getting territorial with _her_?

Phantom blinked at her, surprised. "What? No! That just makes me edgy. If I feel another ghost on my turf, I'll go track them down and see what they're up to, but I won't just _attack_. That would be really rude."

The idea of ghosts having a concept of manners was unbearably weird, but somehow Valerie didn't think he was making it up. The great barrier between them had been suddenly and violently torn down, and where it had been was a sense of raw, painful honesty.

They were in the same boat. There was nothing to be gained from lying to each other now.

"The other ghosts," said Phantom, "I fight them because … well, my Obsession fuels it, but that's not really why. I started before my Obsession formed. I fight them because they're a threat to the people I care about, because they need to be stopped, and I'm in the best position to do it."

She stared at him, considering him in ways she never had before — as a _person_ , rather than some lump of ectoplasm just pretending. "What is your Obsession?"

He winced. "Ordinarily, that is one of the questions you Do Not Ask, with ghosts — that and how we died. But I'll give you a pass this time." He paused and bit his lip, and then said slowly, "My primary Obsession is … protection. Keeping my home and family safe."

Valerie turned that over in her mind. It was completely against everything she thought she knew about ghosts, particularly about _this_ ghost, and yet … it fit. It fit his behaviour, explained a lot. It didn't explain some of the bad stuff he'd done, but, well … being obsessed with protection didn't necessarily make you _good_. Maybe his Obsession had somehow driven his worse acts, too; Valerie was beginning to realise that she very much did not have the whole story.

But one thing bothered her: "Amity Park is your home? Your family is here?"

He frowned at her. "Of course."

"But…" she bit her lip, squinting at him, "…there are records of you from hundreds of years ago — maybe thousands. You're supposed to be one of the oldest ghosts we know about."

"Ah." Phantom winced. "Right. Er." He seemed at a loss for a moment, running a hand through his hair. It stuck to the glove, and he winced again. "I'm not sure how to explain this briefly, but … the Ghost Zone doesn't follow the material world's time. There are some doors in there that you can go through and come out in the Roman Empire, or in Shakespearean England. And I got into kind of a mess with those once, went bouncing all over history. That's why there are all those old records of me. I've actually only been a ghost for two years."

"…Oh," said Valerie slowly, uncertainly. The mental landscape of what she knew about Phantom shifted again, this time to make him young, seriously young. "…So you're from here?"

He nodded. "Yeah."

"And your family still live here?"

Another nod.

A horrible thought struck her. "Do they _know_?"

A pained look came into his face. "My sister does," he admitted quietly. "But my parents don't." His shoulders hunched, and he stared down at his boots. "It would hurt them," he mumbled, barely loud enough to hear.

That hit Valerie like a punch in the gut. Oh god, his _parents_. What would it do to you, to see your kid like _this_?

…What would it do to her father, to see _her_ like this?

That thought made her feel like the world might be ending, like her soul might tear in two. Her jaw quivered, and in a ragged whisper, she said, "I think I understand."

He looked up at her then, that haunted, grief-stricken look in his eyes again. "Oh Val," he said in a small, wobbly voice. "I never wanted this for you. It's why I tried to stop you."

She looked at him, tried to be suspicious of his words, but … some bone-deep part of her _knew_ he was telling the truth. Her habitual, automatic suspicion of him just … dried up and blew away like old leaves. "Thought you just wanted me off your back," she muttered.

One corner of Phantom's mouth twitched up in a weak hint of a smile. "That too, but I wouldn't have outed you to your dad just for that. I did that because I was afraid for you." He paused, eyes flickering off to the side before finding hers again. "And just for the record, that time I blew up your old suit, I knew damn well you weren't in it. I saw you fighting it."

In retrospect, it suddenly seemed obvious that he would have; Phantom had arrived mere moments after she had attacked her own suit to give Danny a chance to escape. She'd assumed that Phantom had just attacked the Red Huntress on sight, but if he had in fact paused to assess the situation first … of course he would have known.

Valerie stared down at her hands, studying the new colours of her armour and trying to shove away the crawling feeling of guilt. "Sorry," she mumbled. "Guess I was a little too quick to think the worst."

"'S okay, Val," he said, voice soft and sad. "I've screwed up too. Like with that dog." He pulled a pained face, looking down. "He really _isn't_ mine. But I was pretty new to ghost-hunting when he first showed up, and I did a crap job of catching him." He shook his head, making white hair fall into his eyes. He swiped it back. "If I'd been better, your dad never would have lost his job. It was an accident, but it's still on me. I … I'm sorry."

He hunched, wrapping his arms around his knees and staring down at his crossed ankles. "Not asking for forgiveness," he said to his knees. "I know you're not one to forgive."

Valerie's stomach dropped a little. Was she not? Was that really the sort of person she was — or _had been,_ before her heart had stopped? In a strange, disorienting moment, she suddenly found herself looking at herself as if from outside, looking at the short, sad life of Valerie Gray.

Born to well-off parents, raised in a happy enough home, never short of toys or friends to play with… But then her mum had died, and the bottom had fallen out of her world.

She'd struggled to cope, to get through it, to figure out who she was and how she fit in the world. She'd felt lonely and adrift, exposed and vulnerable, and she had reacted by trying to armour herself against the world.

And the armour she'd chosen had been image, reputation, and being one of the Popular Crowd.

It had turned her into something of a brat, she knew. That first year of high school, her life had revolved around her reputation and her position, around being as close to the top of the ladder as she could get. That was all that had mattered: being accepted, belonging.

Then had come her sudden, precipitous fall. It had devastated her, lost her everything that she'd used to rebuild herself after her mother's death. But … once she'd come out the other side, come to terms with it … she'd come to appreciate how much she'd learnt from it … how much it had made her grow.

And it had shown her the people around her for who they really were. The likes of Paulina and — to a lesser extent — Star had been revealed as more attached to their standing and image than to Valerie. If they cared about her, they were too scared, too insecure in their positions to show it. Even when Valerie's world was falling to pieces around her, even when she needed them most.

Friendships like that … they were worth nothing at all.

But then she'd turned around and found people like Danny, Sam, and Tucker. People who didn't care about her status and image, only what sort of _person_ she was. People who knew who they were and weren't afraid to show it, who didn't live their lives trying to play a role.

And Danny … Danny was probably the sweetest, most forgiving person she'd ever met, for all he was clearly hiding some deep, dark troubles. Her heart still twisted when she thought of how she'd hurt him, and how he'd turned right round and forgiven her, warmly continued their friendship. He'd never pushed her, never questioned, never got frustrated with her secrets.

Compared to Danny, what was she? When someone had wronged her, she'd gone after him with guns, and every intention of making him pay with … well, not blood, but close enough. And she hadn't let up, hadn't listened to explanations, hadn't believed them when she did hear them. What sort of person did that?

A rage nuke, she answered herself. Someone consumed by anger, resentment, vengeance.

Someone … rather like a ghost.

It hit her like a thunderclap that, viewed from outside, her behaviour pattern was _alarmingly_ ghostlike. Obsession, violence, a mind bent and twisted around a quest for revenge…

She realised, suddenly, that whatever she'd turned into … it had already happened. Years ago, and she hadn't noticed.

And now here was Phantom, huddled in the air, telling her softly, sadly, that he knew she wasn't the sort of person to forgive.

What could she say? How could she even _begin_ to put _any_ of this into words?

"I…" Her voice cracked, the wheels of her mind spinning for traction. "Maybe it's time I learned."

Phantom looked up, eyes wide, staring at her like he thought he'd heard wrong. Valerie felt a flicker of doubt, but then it snuffed out like a candle flame. No. Whether he deserved it or not, she _needed_ to do this. If she was already so much like a ghost as a living human, what the hell might she become now? She needed to get a handle on herself, put a leash on all this anger … before it turned her into a monster.

"You … you really mean that?" asked Phantom, still staring, hands clenched on his ankles.

She hugged herself, shivering. "I … yeah, I mean … I think … I think I'd better … rethink a few things, find a different approach, or else…" She tried to take a deep breath and couldn't, and then her new deepest fear came tumbling out. _"What if I turn into the thing I hunt?"_

Phantom's eyes went wide, confirming her fears that this was a thing that might actually happen. "Oh, yeah, that would be … that could be bad." But then his face changed, set into something determined and sure. "You wouldn't though, not really. Your moral compass is too strong."

She looked at him with her face still tilted downward, hands clenched on her arms. "And I wouldn't have to worry about a fit of rage driving me to something stupid? To forget little things like innocent bystanders?" Something which, if she was honest, she had already done.

"Oh, well…" He grimaced. "Uh, actually … that's a good point. I definitely had to learn to keep a tighter rein on my emotions after … _after_ , so I didn't accidentally blast someone just because they pissed me off." He cocked his head, frowning thoughtfully. "I don't think I actually got any more volatile, y'know, emotionally; it's just … the consequences got … higher. Way higher."

Oh god, thought Valerie, _powers_. She stared at her hands, which helpfully burst back into red ectoplasmic flame the moment she thought about it. She had powers now, big, dangerous powers, and precisely _zero_ control.

"What am I going to do?" she moaned, staring at them. Oh god, where would she go? She couldn't go _home_ — her dad, he'd be horrified, she'd be a danger to him, and to their property besides.

Where could she _go?_

Phantom straightened, floated a little closer, hand raised like he wanted to reach out, but didn't quite dare. He said, with a faint, almost confused note of hope in his voice, "I could … if you want, I could … teach you? How to control it?" Then he tensed and started to backtrack and babble, as Valerie just stared at him. "I mean, if that wouldn't be too weird — I know you probably still don't trust me, but it's just, I had to go through this on my own — I mean, there was no one to teach me — and I was kinda dangerous until I figured things out…"

He drooped, clutching his arms across his chest and looking at the ground twenty feet below them. "I just … don't want you to have to go through this alone," he said very quietly. "If you don't want me, that's fine, I get it, and I could maybe find someone else. I know I couple ghosts in the Zone you might actually like, if you give them a chance…" He trailed off, looking nervously up at her through his hair.

Valerie's insides did a little swoop and she suddenly realised: Phantom wanted to _teach_ her. He was offering her tutelage, _help_.

She looked at him, took him in, and weighed up whether she trusted him. Her mind hit that familiar sticking point, the one that always refused to let her. So she turned her mind to all the other ghosts she knew, and she weighed whether she might, maybe, learn to trust any of them.

It made her, for one hysterical moment, want to laugh. _God_ no. She'd trust Phantom a hundred times before she turned to any of _them_.

But what about these others, in the Zone?

The memories of her few previous experiences in the weird underworld burst across her mind, and she was shaking her head before she even knew she'd made a decision. "No, no, I can't go to the Zone." Her voice was twisting and tightening with an emotion she couldn't identify. "No, I can't — I can't _leave_ yet. I'm not _ready_."

Phantom's face contorted with painful sympathy. "I know," he said roughly. "Believe me, I know. There's more than one reason I stayed here."

She looked up, met his eyes, and in that moment knew that he understood completely. And that was the moment when her mind burst through its old, stubborn sticking point.

Looking him right in the eye, she said, "Okay. I — yeah. Okay." And then, gathering herself, she came out and said it. "Teach me."

Phantom couldn't have looked more taken aback if she'd proposed marriage. "I — what, really?" On any other day, she would have laughed at him. She had never seen him so hilariously, completely dumbfounded. "I — gotta admit, did not expect you to say yes. Uh, okay."

He blinked, bit his lip, looked around, and then pulled back his left glove to look at — yes, that was a watch. Phantom had a watch. And for some reason, he was checking it. Like he was some sort of _normal person_ with a _schedule_.

And Valerie had thought this situation couldn't get any more surreal.

"Not even ten yet," he muttered to himself. "We got time." He looked back up at her. "Okay, uh … where do you want to start?"

Was he serious? She held up her flaming hands and tried to drill a glare right through his forehead.

"Uh, right, okay, the dangerous stuff. Or, the how-not-to-be-dangerous stuff." He gave her a tentative, shy smile, one that reminded her of someone … but she couldn't put her finger on who. "Okay, let's do it."

***

Of course, that was the moment that the universe chose to make Valerie's situation _even worse_.

"FREEZE, SPOOKS!" roared Jack Fenton from where he'd just jumped out from behind a bit of collapsed wall. He was brandishing a monster of a weapon. It must have been half his size, and he was a bear of a man.

Valerie was vaguely aware of Phantom hissing, "Shit," beside her, but her mind was busy falling into a new spiral, because Mr. Fenton was pointing that gun at _her_ — that nice, cheerful, over-enthusiastic man, Danny's _dad_ , was pointing a gun at _her_. Because now she was a ghost.

Because she was the enemy.

She probably would have just floated there, frozen in horror, if Phantom hadn't grabbed her arm and said, "C'mon, we gotta get outta here _now_!" And he dragged her out of the way of a blast and into a dive to the side, putting rubble between them and Mr. Fenton.

It was the first time Phantom had touched her since … since. Valerie's dazed mind noticed that his fingers were cool, and his touch tingled — she could feel the buzz of his energy, and the brush of his aura, like snowflakes on her skin.

She was snapped out of it by an ecto-blast searing overhead. She ducked, Phantom jerking her into evasive action.

"Aaand there's the ambush," he muttered, and she followed his gaze to see Mrs. Fenton ahead of them, kneeling on a piece of collapsed wall as she aimed another shot.

Valerie realised that it was a clever trap. Mr. Fenton jumped out and spooked them, driving them straight into the path of his more dangerous wife. And Phantom had clearly been expecting exactly that.

He shot off to the side, away from both Fentons, towing Valerie along with him. Glaring-bright ecto-blasts whizzed by, searing across her night-vision. She grabbed hold of Phantom, taking the arm that was holding her and hooking her right arm over his shoulder. Her hoverboard, stuck to her feet as if by glue, knocked into his legs as he jerked her into a zigzag evasive manoeuvre.

Flying like this, driven by sheer will and ectoplasm — it was different, and she wasn't at all sure she could do it herself. So she clung to her former enemy like a freaked baby monkey.

"Any way you could lose the board?" he yelled as a blast missed by inches, sending up a cloud of dust where it hit the ground. "It's slowing us down!"

She grit her teeth and concentrated. No reason why this shouldn't work just like it used to. And sure enough, the board collapsed and retracted — and she put her helmet back up while she was at it.

Belatedly, she realised that the Fentons had seen her with her helmet down. Had they recognised her? As the Red Huntress? As _Valerie?_ …Maybe not either; it was dark, and she knew her suit looked _really_ different. Her face might too. (God, she didn't _want_ her face to be different!)

They'd shown no sign of recognition. They probably just took her for some new arrival from the Netherworld.

But … if they had recognised her … would it have even stopped them? Or would they see her as automatically now an enemy to humanity? Would they think it a kindness to put her down?

Maybe it would be.

She felt sick.

Valerie clung to Phantom as he ducked, dodged, and spiralled through the same erratic flight pattern that he'd so often used to escape her. The Fentons fell rapidly behind. She pressed her visor into his back and shut her eyes, wishing for it all to be over.

Wishing so, so hard to wake up.

This couldn't be real. She didn't _want_ it to be real, couldn't _live_ with it being real. ( _You don't have to live with anything anymore,_ said a treacherous little voice somewhere inside.) She just wanted to wake up, feel her heart beating in her chest, feel the air in her lungs…

And that was when it happened. A balloon of warmth exploded in her chest — from where her heart used to be. It washed out through her body, all the way out to her fingers and toes.

And Phantom obviously felt it, because he yelped and dropped dangerously. The ground rushed up towards them. Phantom leaned back beneath her, managing to pull back their momentum enough that they tumbled gently to the grassy ground.

Grass. Dark, shadowy trees overhead. In just a couple of minutes, Phantom had taken them right out to the edge of town. Valerie rolled onto her back, stared up at branches silhouetted black against the stars, and _gasped_.

…She was breathing. She was _breathing_. She clawed at her chest, halfway convinced she was imagining it.

_"Val?"_ said Phantom's incredulous voice from close at hand. She looked — he was sprawled right beside her, pushing himself up with one arm, the tiny circles of his irises now glowing clearly through the murk.

He wasn't looking at her face; his eyes were running back and forth over the rest of her. The only word for his expression was astounded. "Your suit," he whispered.

She looked. Black and red.

Her heart throbbed in her ears.

Without her consent, out of her mouth burst: "What the _fuck_?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just when she thought she knew what was happening, Val's life is turned upside down _yet again._
> 
> But she's finally forgiving Danny -- more because she's scared of herself and what she's turning into than because she really wants to forgive him, but it's a start. And once she gets to know him a little better, real forgiveness will follow.
> 
> Anyway, hope you enjoyed it, and please leave a comment! I love hearing which bits and particular lines had the most impact, so I know what's working. It helps me improve! : )


	3. Liminal Spirits

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just when Valerie thinks she knows what's going on, Phantom takes her world and turns it upside down and inside out. And then all the secrets come out.
> 
> "I can seriously go back to my real life?"
> 
> "Sure — I've been doing this for two years, and no one has noticed there's something weird about me."
> 
> She stared at him. "…Danny, freaking _everyone_ has noticed that there's something weird about you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here's the final chapter! For now, anyway; I think there might a sequel lurking in the wings...
> 
> First of all, credit to Marsalias for the liminal spirit stuff. I have always disliked the term "halfa" — it just felt lazy and uncreative, not to mention REALLY vague. I mean, it could be used for a half-ANYTHING — half-alien, half-demon, half-bug-eyed-monster-from-the-bottom-of-the-sea. How about a name that actually _tells you something,_ huh?!
> 
> And I always favoured the idea of Danny as this liminal being caught between life and death over him being made of a ghost half and human half just kinda smushed together. So I grabbed Marsalias's liminal spirits terminology and ran with it.
> 
> I also did something a bit different with the human/ghost transformation, since the transformation rings are another thing that starts to feel really silly when you start picturing Danny as a real, live-action person instead of a cartoon.
> 
> Other notes: Danny's opinions of Vlad here are essentially mine — his ghost form seriously looks like it was designed by a melodramatic fourteen-year-old. And finally, Valerie's recoloration is just a total colour-wheel inversion: red to green and vice versa, yellow to purple, and orange to blue.

Valerie was maybe kind of panicking again. She was breathing — _hyperventilating_ — her heart was pounding like mad, and her suit was black and red, and _her damn helmet wouldn't retract again, she felt like she was suffocating—_

"This is impossible," Phantom was muttering, kneeling beside her with a look of awed disbelief. "It can't— You can't— _How did this happen?_ "

Valerie paid him no attention, too busy trying to pry her helmet off with brute force. It wouldn't move wouldn't budge her breath was starting to whistle with panic she needed it _off_ —

 _Cold._ It exploded from the centre of her, washed over her. Phantom jerked back with a yelp. Her helmet finally collapsed and retracted, she tried to take a deep breath—

She choked on it. It wouldn't come, and then she saw her suit was white and green, her body was shimmery and not quite there, her chest was cold and still…

 _What was happening?!_ "No," she choked, pounding at her chest to get her heart to beat. "No…"

"Val — VAL!" shouted Phantom, grabbing her flailing arms. He pulled on them to make her look at him. "Listen to me. I know what's happening, and I know what to do. I'm gonna help. Okay?"

She stared into his eerie eyes, desperate for direction, grasping at the thread of hope he offered.

Speaking calmly and firmly, he said, "You need to reach into your core, right in the middle of you. Can you feel it?"

Silly question — of course she could. It sat there quietly, unsettlingly still, radiating cold through her body. She nodded.

"Okay. Reach inside it. Feel for a spark of warmth. Can you find it?"

Valerie shut her eyes and reached. She felt the core, the tingle and swirl of energy, of ectoplasm. She felt … maybe … just a spark…

"Yes," she whispered.

"Good. Pull on it."

Her eyes popped back open, meeting his. "How?"

He smiled reassuringly. "Call it. Draw it out."

She frowned at him, shut her eyes, and tried. The flutter of panic made it hard, tough to focus, but she searched for the spark, found it, and _pulled_.

Warmth surged through her again. She drew in air. And in her ear, she heard _thum-thump, thum-thump, thum-thump._

She opened her eyes. Her suit was black and red, and her helmet was off. She breathed deep of the clear night air.

Phantom sat back and stared at her. "I can't believe it," he murmured, more to himself. "You're _like me._ " Then, before she could process that, he slapped himself in the face and drew his hand down his cheek. "Of course, electricity and ectoplasm," he muttered. "You got hit with a shit-ton ectoplasmic electricity. And that suit — Technus made it, and he bonded it to your _body_ , so you must have had a fair bit of ectoplasm in you already…"

Valerie had to try twice to make her voice work. "What," she croaked, "the _hell_ are you talking about? What's going on?" Then, voice rising into a threat of hysteria, _"Am I alive or am I dead?"_

He surged in close, with calming hands on her shoulders. _"Both,"_ he said hoarsely, eyes bright with earnest, desperate honesty. "You're both, and neither. Caught in the middle. Trapped in this … this impossible razor's edge between life and death." He leaned back a little, disbelief coming into his voice. "Like me. Dear god, holy shit, you're _like me_."

She gave him a wild look that edged into aggression. "How am I like you?" she demanded, even as what bits of her mind were still working properly ran ahead and started putting it together. "You're … not all dead?" Her voice went squeaky with baffled disbelief.

Phantom's mouth twisted in a pained, wry smile, sitting back and hugging his knees. "Turns out that our unique cause of death can have some interesting effects on a person. I don't really understand it, but something about the mix of electricity and ectoplasm both … kills you and brings you back at the same time. And maybe the electricity does something like electrolysis," he waved a hand, "y'know, like, allows the ectoplasm to bond with your body and turn it into … this."

Valerie tried to process that, but her brain wasn't up to it. She vaguely remembered that electrolysis could make one element stick to another, and realised that Phantom was saying that it had let the ectoplasm stick to _her._ And that had turned her into … some sort of … semi-ghost … thing.

She stared at him, with something that might, possibly, consider becoming hope stirring in her chest. "So … I'm not all dead?"

"No!" And Phantom brightened, straightening up onto his knees with a smile. "You can still be human. You can go home. If you can get control of your powers, you can go on living your life, and no one will even know. That's—" He caught himself, ducked his head, and then finished his admission in a whisper, looking at the ground. "That's what I did."

She _gaped_ him. "You … you're … you're still _living a human life?"_

He peeked up at her from under his bangs and nodded, biting his lip.

She stared — his white hair, his eyes, no way those blended in. "You can change your appearance," she realised. "Like…" she waved a hand at herself, "…whatever this is. You can look _normal_."

Her world, her beliefs, everything she'd ever thought about this ghost — all of it was shattering, _even more_. This couldn't be true … he couldn't … she couldn't picture Phantom looking _human_.

He nodded, face still tilted towards the ground. "That's how I knew how to tell you what to do," he whispered.

He seemed to be waiting for something. Waiting for her to react, figure something out.

She tried to picture it. Her suit had reversed colours, so … probably his would too, black to white and white to black. But that was no good; to blend in, he'd have to have completely different clothes.

The face — that was where to concentrate. She tried to picture him with solid human skin, rather than slightly translucent ghost skin that looked like it was made partially of light. She pictured eyes without the glow of ectoplasm — brown, grey, maybe blue. And the hair … maybe the hair reversed colour too, like the suit…?

A boy about her age, with black hair that fell into his eyes…

It hit her like a baseball bat to the solar plexus.

A dozen eerie similarities that she'd always written off as a mere chance resemblance, in his face … his voice … _the way he rubbed the back of his head when uncomfortable_ …

In a faint, squeaky croak, she said, "…Danny?"

And he met her eyes and gave her a rough, sad smile. "Hey, Val."

And a light started at his core and surged through his body — the faint glow of his form intensified as the wave passed over it, and then it solidified into real human flesh. His jumpsuit twisted and reformed into ordinary clothes — a hoodie and jeans. His white hair turned jet black. The glow of his eyes went out.

And sitting before her was Danny Fenton.

Valerie shrieked.

She flailed, not even knowing what she was trying to do. She was distantly aware of Danny's eyes going big and alarmed, more closely aware of him grabbing her arms and hissing, "Shh! Shh! Val, my parents are still hunting us, and it would _really be better_ if they didn't find us!"

His words didn't entirely penetrate. Valerie was past the point of being able to deal with things. She smacked at him, more mindless flailing than real blows

"You … you…" She managed to smack him across the face before he got a proper grip on her wrists. She could have thrown him off — of the two of them, she was the one with actual martial arts training — but she was too busy looking into his face with dawning realisation. "You're _dead_." Her friend, her _ex-boyfriend_ , and he was _dead_.

"Only sorta," he said softly. He gave that wry, sad smile again. "I mean, I died, but I'm not really dead. Or not all the time, anyway. I'm — _we_ — are what's called liminal spirits."

That bit was probably important, probably very important, but the unfamiliar word just skimmed right off the surface of Valerie's mind in favour of more immediate things.

"You — _you're Phantom_. You've been Phantom this _entire time_." It did not make sense. They felt like two completely different personalities. Phantom was bold, cocksure — a troublemaker with a cocky smirk, always game for a fight. Danny, on the other hand, was quiet, gentle, so kind and sweet, and always getting pushed around by the bigger, more athletic boys. Danny actively _ran the other way_ from fights, whether they be against ordinary or supernatural opponents.

"Uh, yeah," Danny admitted, watching her cautiously. "Since the beginning of freshman year."

She stared at him, searching his face. She absolutely could not imagine Phantom as Danny, letting Dash Baxter push him, punch him, and shove him in his locker. Phantom would never let himself be treated that way.

But then her imagination did a disorienting flip. Could she see _Danny_ as _Phantom_? Could she see that quiet, shy boy taking on a different personality, creating an identity in which he could fight back? In which he didn't have to let himself be pushed around?

The mystery cracked open in her head. Suddenly she saw a whole different side to Danny, one in which he took all the abuse from people like Dash and took it out on other targets … more durable targets. Because … Danny being Phantom meant that he definitely _could_ hit back. He _chose_ not to.

And then she remembered what he'd said about needing to keep a tighter lid on his anger. _This_ was what he'd meant.

She realised that, when it came to bullies, Danny wasn't passive. He was controlled.

"The whole time I've known you," she whispered, "you've been—" Dead, kinda. Keeping secrets.

A new wave of incredulousness hit her. "I was _hunting_ you, and you _made friends_ with me! You _went out_ with me! You—"

She flung his arms off her and snarled, "You _lied_ to me!"

He flinched back, cringing with guilt. Valerie rose up on her knees, clenched fists bursting into red flame despite her current human appearance. Wild, baffling emotions raged through her. She was angry, she was scared, she was desperate, she _didn't know what to feel…_

"I'm sorry," said Danny brokenly to the ground. "I couldn't tell you. I couldn't tell anyone."

She opened her mouth to snap, _'Why not?'_ But she couldn't pretend she didn't know. So instead, she growled, "You told Sam and Tucker." Because those two obviously knew.

But Danny was shaking his head. "I never told them. They were there when I … when I died."

 _That_ hit Valerie like a punch to the gut. The flame on her fists went out. Oh god, imagine being there … imagine watching your friend die… "How did—" she started, then stopped herself, remembering that that was one of the things you Did Not Ask.

But Danny answered her anyway, his voice low and tight. "My parents' portal to the Ghost Zone. It didn't work at first, and they gave up, so Sam, Tucker, and I went to take a look at it while they were gone." He gave a haunted parody of a smile. "I fixed what was wrong with it. Unfortunately, I was still inside it when I did."

Of its own volition, Valerie's hand rose to cover her mouth. "Oh god," she whispered, imagining being in Sam and Tucker's place. Imagining being in _Danny's_ place.

"That's one of the reasons I can't tell my parents," he whispered, looking down. "It was their prized invention that killed me. They'd never forgive themselves."

Of course, she thought. She'd be afraid to tell them that, too. And plus— "They're _ghost-hunters_ ," she hissed in rising horror. "They _hunt you_!" Her eyes went wide, alarm bells blaring in her ears. "They're hunting you _right now!_ "

He raised a reassuring hand. "They can't track us like this, in human form. And we'll hear my dad coming a mile off."

She gaped at him. "That's not— Are you _crazy_? They _shoot_ at you! Their own son!" How the hell could he stand this situation, how could he _let it happen_ …

He shrugged, uncomfortable. "They don't know it's me. And I know that, if they did, they'd stop. I know they love me, and that they'd never hurt me if they knew. But…" He sighed heavily. "I just can't tell them. It would hurt them, to know that I died, especially because it was in _their invention_. And all my ghost-hunting would worry them, they might try to stop me, or get in my way. And…"

His shoulders slumped, and his voice dropped low. "Sometimes I worry that they'd try to fix me. That they'd try to, like … purge all the ectoplasm out of me, or something. Make me normal. Which wouldn't work."

…That didn't sound so terrible to Valerie. She might be prepared to let them try, in his place. "Why wouldn't it?" she asked quietly.

Danny gave her a wry look. "We _died_ , Val. You can't just take that back. You can't bring the dead back to life, even if they're only liminally dead."

There was that word again. _Liminal_.

Danny went on, "Even our physical, human forms are made partly out of ectoplasm. If they purged that out, there … wouldn't be enough of us left to survive."

She felt cold. "We'd … die the rest of the way."

He gave her a grim half-smile. "Yep."

She sat back, the reality of her situation washing over her like a massive ocean wave. No going back, no fixing it. This was her, now, with ectoplasm in her veins.

Her existential distress was interrupted by the distant sound of something large crashing through branches. Danny's head shot up like a deer's, alert and wary, and he grabbed Valerie's shoulder with a tense hand. Beside him, Valerie fought to drag her head back into the game, to somehow shove an entire ocean of confused emotion into a bottle and ready herself for action once more.

A part of her was quietly glad to have Danny — Phantom? the two were now tangled up in her head as both the friend she could trust and also the dangerous, powerful ghost — to watch out for her while she was compromised.

Jack Fenton's enormous voice boomed from somewhere far distant, "Damn spooks! We'll find you! You can't hide from a Fenton!"

And then, a much fainter voice, carried on the breeze: "Jack, they've disappeared off all our instruments…"

Fear spiked through Valerie again. She couldn't be found like this, in her suit but without her helmet, never _mind_ all the ghostly nonsense.

Danny's hand moved from Valerie's shoulder to her elbow, gently pulling her up to her feet. "C'mon," he murmured. "They won't find us, but let's get just a little farther away."

They slipped away through the trees, Danny moving with an eerie silence that Valerie just couldn't match. She stared intently at his back, trying to work out what he was doing, how he was using his ghostliness to do it, but whatever it was, it was subtle.

The noise of the Fentons — mostly Jack — faded rapidly out of hearing as Danny led them through the trees and then, suddenly, out into open air, the stars spread in a great twinkling canopy above them, and reflected perfectly off the glass-still surface of Amity Lake.

Danny breathed a sigh and relaxed. "They won't come this far. We're good here."

A decision coalesced in Valerie's head and came tumbling out of her mouth. "I need to get out of my suit."

Focus on the practicalities. That was how you kept yourself together in a crisis. And the biggest practicality right now was that _Valerie needed out of her suit._

Danny turned to her, eyebrows raised.

"It's completely fried," she told him, hitting buttons on her arm and neck to demonstrate. "And I can't be seen like this."

Danny nodded. "Right, of course." He caught his lip between his teeth. "Um, how?"

Valerie thought about it, shoving away all the fear and uncertainty to focus on the problem. She grimaced. "I think we'll have to break it up and pry it off. Maybe we could use a sharp stone, or a strong stick, or…"

Danny held out a hand, and in it a blue light shimmered, brightened, and formed itself into a blade of ice. Mist formed off it and fell gently, drifting down. Valerie stared at it, weirdly mesmerised by seeing it form in Danny's human hand. "Ectoplasmic ice," he explained. "Lot stronger than normal ice." He flipped it round and offered it to her by the handle.

She shook herself out of her trance and raised her hand. She hesitated halfway, wondering whether it was cold enough to burn. But then she remembered that she was still wearing her suit gloves. She took it.

A faint coolness penetrated through the gloves, but nothing much. She took it and worked the tip under the edge of one of plates on her left arm.

It wasn't easy, and suppressed anger and frustration made her shove and stab a bit more vigorously than was wise, considering it was her own arm under there. But eventually the plate came loose. She felt a brief flash of victory — the missing piece made it much easier to get under the next one. But that victory soon evaporated when the next one didn't come off any easier.

She groaned, hot frustration surging up her throat. "This is going to take _forever_."

Danny twitched forward, then hesitated. "Um … is it okay if I help?"

She paused, honestly unsure. Then she decided that, for the sake of time, it had to be. "Yeah, okay. Just be careful not to stick me."

He smiled, another blade forming in his hand. "You bet."

He set very carefully to work on her shoulder, not touching her any more than he had to. Valerie started on another plate, chaos and questions swirling and burning inside her. Danny hadn't even finished prying off his first plate before the questions built up so much pressure that they started spilling out.

"So what was that word — limmy…?"

"Liminal. Means sorta … in between. Neither one thing or the other." He canted a wry smile at her. "And that's us." He looked back down at his work. "Our status with the other ghosts is a little … awkward. They mostly treat us as ghosts, but, as you've probably noticed, there's a whole batch of them who seem to get their kicks through coming and testing their strength against me on a regular and repeated basis…"

She turned her head to look at him, excited, nervous bubbles going off inside her. " _Us_. Are there more … liminal spirits … around?"

He froze for a moment, and his brow scrunched in internal debate. "…A couple," he said finally. "As far as I know, there are only three in the world. Four, now, including you." Then he stopped prying, set his jaw and shoulders, and looked her dead in the eye. "You should probably know, for your own safety, Vlad Masters is one of them. And not a nice one."

Valerie's entire internal world dissolved into static. _"What?"_

Danny nodded, grim. "The first, I think. He died more than twenty years ago, as a result of an accident with a prototype ghost portal that he was developing with my parents. You've probably seen his ghost form — he's made it into this bombastic, super overblown vampire, because he is a total drama queen. And he named himself _Plasmius_." Danny rolled his eyes at this supreme level of uncoolness. "Or you might also have heard him called the Wisconsin Ghost."

"I know the one you mean," Valerie said faintly. She had just enough experience with Plasmius to know that he was really, really dangerous. She thought of Mayor Masters — kinda oily and smarmy and insincere, but kind enough to support her, help her, to believe in her and supply her with…

"Hang on," she said suddenly, feeling the world teetering beneath her. "Does that mean — when he supplied me with ghost weapons, supported my hunting…?"

Danny grimaced apologetically. "He was totally using you, yeah. He was after me at the time, setting every ghost he could on my tail, trying to pressure me into turning to him for help."

"Why?" demanded Valerie, her head spinning with _even more_ earth-shaking new information.

Danny snorted. "'Cause he's super lonely and desperate. He's been in love with my mom since forever, reckons she should have married him instead of my dad, and that I should have been _his_ son, especially since I became half-dead like him. So he keeps making periodical attempts to murder my dad, seduce my mom, and convince me to renounce my father and become his apprentice. _Needless_ to say, it hasn't gone well for him."

Valerie stared at him, brow askew and mouth open. She had _no freaking idea_ whether to believe any of that or not, but frankly, right now… She dropped her face into her hands with something between a growl and a strangled scream. "I _cannot take_ any more surprises tonight," she rasped. "Or maybe ever."

Danny laughed hoarsely. "Yeah. Know the feeling."

"God," muttered Valerie, telling herself, _Practicalities, focus on practicalities,_ and going back to prying plates off her suit. Her left arm and shoulder were mostly free, and she was able to slide off the left glove. She moved on to the chest plates, while Danny moved to her back. They worked in silence for a while, Valerie taking the time to just process, let all the information settle.

Some of it fit a little too well, and wow, it explained some stuff she'd seen between Masters and the Fentons.

She was about halfway to freeing her chest when more words bubbled up. "Your parents don't know about Masters either, do they?"

"No," Danny confirmed from behind her. "He and I have a deal not to out each other — a stalemate. But telling you isn't really breaking it, because now it's your secret too."

She grimaced and swallowed the truth of that. It was uncomfortable going down.

"And who's the fourth liminal? You said there were four."

Danny's ice blade paused for a tiny moment in prying at her back. She felt the gust of Danny's sigh against the back of her neck. "She's a long and complicated story, and one we should maybe leave for another time, if you don't want any more big things to process tonight. But I'll tell you about her later, because I definitely want you to meet her." Something soft, something … familial came into his voice as he said, "I think you might be a good influence on her."

Valerie paused, some small part of her weirdly pleased, then gave a tiny shrug. "Okay. Anyone we know?" God, she didn't think she could deal with anyone else around her being secretly a ghost.

"Nah," Danny dismissed. "You've never met her, in either form."

"Okay."

They were quiet for a while again, and then Valerie found there was something else she really wanted to know. "You've explained a lot of the stuff you've done, that I've blamed you for, but … what really happened with the mayor? And all that stealing?"

Danny groaned. "None of that was my fault, okay. They're both kinda long stories. The mayor — ugh, I'll tell you that one later, but for now suffice to say that the mayor was possessed by a ghost I'd pissed off and who was out to get me in trouble at home."

(This conversation would take place several days later, and would include Danny admitting that he had _maybe_ got himself _kind of_ arrested.

"Danny!" Valerie squawked, horrified.

 _"It wasn't my fault,"_ Danny insisted, and went into a three-minute rant about Walker and his many, many ridiculous and petty rules.

"So anyway, I got out of there, along with some friends I made along the way—"

_"You staged a jailbreak?!"_

"He had it coming!"

…And so forth.)

"And as for the thefts…" Something in Danny's voice changed, shivered. When he didn't continue, she turned to look at him.

The sight that greeted her was a horrible, haunted look that she had never seen on Danny's face before. "Danny? What is it?"

"There was a circus in town, Circus Gothicka," he said in a low, rough voice, not looking at her. "Sam really wanted to go, so we went. Its ringmaster, Freakshow, he had this staff, with a red crystal ball on top. As soon as I looked at it, my brain just blanked out, and next thing I knew, I was someplace else, hours later, with no idea what had gone on between."

He clenched his fists, the knuckles of his right white around the ice blade. He stared at it blankly — thousand-yard stare, thought Valerie. "Turned out his staff could control ghosts. He was using it to make them perform circus acts for him, and then, in the off hours … make him rich."

Danny's voice dropped into strained whisper. "He stole me."

Valerie's insides curdled with sick, nauseating horror. "You mean … _mind control?_ "

He nodded wordlessly and swallowed a few times before he could speak again. "Being liminal gave me an advantage in fighting him, so I eventually managed to throw him off, thanks to Sam. And the staff was smashed." He shivered and wrapped both hands around the blade, staring at it like he was trying to see nothing else. "Had nightmares for months, though," he mumbled.

"I bet," Valerie said faintly, unable to believe what her friend had been through. It made her sick. She twisted and reached to lay a hand on his arm. "Jesus, Danny."

His eyes flicked up to her, and he tried to smile, but it didn't really work. "Yeah." Neither of them moved for a minute, just sitting there with Valerie's hand on Danny's arm, Valerie's top half free of her suit and the pair of them surrounded by scattered armour plates.

Then Valerie's hand tightened on Danny and she said, "So … this staff … it could control ghosts? Control … _us?_ " The idea of an object that could bend ghosts to someone's will — that was alarming enough. The idea that she was included in that was a million times worse.

Danny straightened, visibly pulling himself together at the sound of the fear in her voice. He met her eye. "It's gone. Destroyed. I guess there might be other things like it somewhere — I have nightmares about that, sometimes, too — but I haven't heard anything about them, and I have asked around my ghost friends. If I hear about anything, you will be the first to know, I promise you."

Valerie took a steadying breath and nodded. _Don't worry about it_ , she told herself. _No point borrowing trouble, and you have WAY TOO MANY things to worry about already._

She released him and looked down at her suit, trying to forcibly calm the waters of her mind. "C'mon, let's get this done."

It actually didn't take them long after that. Once they got down to her waist, they found that, with Danny pulling on her boots, they were able to just slide her legs out. Valerie sighed in relief to be free, then groaned at the sight of the shattered remains of her suit. "What are we going to do with _this_?" she asked the world at large.

Danny scratched the back of his head. "Could just dump it in the lake. Or I could sneak it home and dump it in the Zone."

She bit her lip, torn between whether it might be an environmental hazard in the lake or whether she wanted to ask Danny to do yet more for her.

"Or," said Danny, lighting his hands with ectoplasmic fire and grinning at her, "we could blow it into itty bitty tiny pieces."

"Yeah," she decided. "Better do that. I don't want it recognisable."

"Okay!" said Danny, unexpectedly brightly for someone who had clearly been fighting PTSD five minutes ago. Valerie hoped he wasn't repressing, then realised that Jazz would never let him get away with that. She would lock him in the lab and _make_ him talk it out, ghost powers or no ghost powers.

"This can be your first lesson!" said Danny, grinning.

And in a moment, he shifted his form. That wave of light started at his heart — at his core — and pulsed out under his skin. And as it passed through him, it left his flesh oddly vague and luminescent — ghostly, not quite solid. His clothes twisted back into that familiar jumpsuit, and all the colour washed out of his hair. His eyes ignited with green light, and he grinned at her.

Valerie took a deep breath, looked down at her arms, and pulled on the cold spot in her chest.

The cold _pulsed_. She watched the pulse run through her body and down her arms — like Danny, it was light under her skin. As it washed over her, her suit materialised, white and green instead of black and red. And like Danny, something about her didn't seem perfectly solid. She was a little … misty.

As she stared at her arms, suddenly she wanted to see them without the suit, see what her flesh really looked like. Could she retract the suit? Would it even work, or was she stuck with what she died in?

The answer turned out to be that it still worked as usual. The suit retracted, revealing her clothes.

Her yellow shirt and orange skirt had turned a soft purple and blue. And her skin … like Danny's, it had a faint inner light to it, but while his shone white and almost pearlescent, the effect on her darker skin was to make it glow almost gold.

Beside her, Danny's voice spoke soft and hushed: "Wow, Val." She looked up, and he ducked his head away from staring, rubbing the back of his head. "You look … really beautiful," he mumbled awkwardly. And then, hurriedly, "I mean, objectively. Uh."

"I do?" she whispered, looking back at her arms. Then she remembered the glass-still surface of the lake, and she lurched towards it.

The face that stared up at her was that of a stranger. Her hair was stark white, billowing back in a great curly cloud from her now-blue headband. Her skin was radiantly golden-brown, glowing from within. And her eyes … the tiny circles of her irises glowed with red fire.

She stared. The face stared back. She reached a hand toward the water. The girl in the water reached back. Their hands met, and cold water kissed Valerie's fingertips.

Danny was right. She was beautiful. And somehow that fact was the most disconcerting thing she'd ever felt.

She sat back on the lumpy pebbles and stared off into the night sky, trying to slot reality back into place. Danny was silent behind her, waiting, letting her process — for he knew, of course, better than any, what it was like.

At last, without turning, Valerie said, "I can seriously go back to my real life?"

The pebbles crunched under Danny's white boots as he came to sit beside her. "Sure — I've been doing this for two years, and no one has noticed there's something weird about me."

She stared at him. "…Danny, freaking _everyone_ has noticed that there's something weird about you."

He grinned. "…Well, okay, yeah, but not supernatural-entity-pretending-to-be-normal-human weird."

Valerie's face was not capable of expressing the amount of incredulity that warranted. "Half the school thinks you're on _drugs_."

"On drugs is not _weird_. It's an unfortunately common affliction in our modern society and should be treated with help and compassion instead of being marginalised."

Valerie threw up her hands. "Oh my _god_ , I am trying to have a serious argument, _stop quoting Sam Manson at me_."

They both held for an instant, staring at each other, and then burst out laughing as one. Valerie pitched forward, giggling uncontrollably into her hands, while Danny listed off to the side, wheezing as an ocean's worth of emotion and stress poured out of the two of them.

"Oh god," Valerie gasped after a minute. "I still can't believe _any_ of this."

Danny straightened himself, still chuckling. "Yeah, I know. Took me a few weeks to convince myself it was all real."

As their laughter eased into comfortable silence, Valerie leaned forward to examine her reflection again. Awe flickered in her stomach. She looked … like some sort of _angel_ , honestly. It was … so strange.

"I want to see my suit," she announced suddenly, already reaching out to activate it.

As before, it behaved exactly as it was supposed to, unfolding from her boots and assembling itself over her skin. And with it came a rush of power, a ready-for-battle thrill, that lit up her hands with flickering flames of too-red fire.

She looked down at her reflection.

The image that greeted her was like an odd parody of the Red Huntress. The white suit, green accents, and red ectoplasm swirling around her hands … it was almost … themed….

And _that_ was the straw that broke the camel's back. Valerie threw back her head and wailed at the sky,

"I LOOK LIKE A FUCKING CHRISTMAS CARD."

Danny choked. He clapped his hands over his mouth to hold in the laughter, but his eyes danced. He managed to control himself for a grand total of fifteen seconds before bursting out, "Valerie Gray, the Candy Cane Huntress! Her ectoplasm is peppermint flavoured!"

She pointed a flaming finger at him. "FUCK YOU, PHANTOM. LET'S SEE HOW YOU LIKE A PEPPERMINT BLAST TO THE _FACE_."

But for once, Valerie Gray did not attempt to take out her ire on Phantom's face. Instead, she redirected it to the remains of her old suit, the fucking _traitor_ that had _turned her into a fucking candy cane_.

It exploded into roughly three million pieces. Danny whooped and _did not stop laughing_.

And somehow, Valerie liked him better for it.

END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the record, I did not do the candy cane thing on purpose. I just reversed Val's colours, and then realised _oh shit._
> 
> I also didn't really know how she'd look out of the suit until I got to that part and really starting picturing it, and then I got this image and suddenly realised, "Holy crap, she's gorgeous." And then I thought that was kinda fun, because it was yet another thing to make her conflicted about her ghost form — she thinks of it as a dark thing, but it makes her look like an angel.
> 
> I went kinda dark on the Freakshow stuff because I feel that there was NO WAY that shit wasn't traumatising, and if DP weren't a kids' show, there would have been long-lasting consequences. So I gave a hint of that here.
> 
> And that's it for now! I have a few ideas for a sequel, but I think that, if I can make it happen, it'll more of a sporadically updating collection of snippets of Val's new life -- first day back at school, first clash with ghost hunters, first time meeting Danielle, stuff like that. If you have any ideas of stuff you'd like to see, drop me a comment and I'll add it to the Possibilities Pile! : )
> 
> Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed it!


End file.
